eZuce and NextPlane Partnership Delivers Seamless UC Federation

NextPlane has just announced that eZuce openUC has been added to NextPlane UC Exchange as a Certified UC Platform. eZuce openUC has demonstrated full IM/P federation with Microsoft Lync during initial Phase I certification in which users are able to share not only standard presence states of either "Available," "Away," "Busy," or "DND" on UC clients but also custom status messages, and enhanced presence states with federated colleagues.

The eZuce openUC platform is an open-source UC software suite including voice, video, instant messaging, presence, conferencing, collaboration, unified messaging, call center, and mobility. It is sold per registered user, not device, and available on-premise or as a hosted service. It's built on native SIP technology that installs on a physical server. openUC targets midsize to large enterprises with thousands of users in a distributed environment. With openUC v4.6 and Unite client, enterprises are positioned to support a cloud-based virtualized communications infrastructure and enable social interaction to become part of the normal business workflow. Key features include:

• Global load sharing clusters with up to 12 geographically distributed nodes serving up to 100,000 users along with extended redundancy of media services that leverage existing storage backend systems for media files including Amazon S3 cloud storage and GridFS
  
  
• Cloud deployment options leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with one of the industry's smallest resource footprints
  
  
• Further reduction of administrative overhead through complete automation of the installation, provisioning, and the enablement of a small remote team to administer large global clusters
  
  
• Active Directory and LDAP integration capabilities to deliver a better user experience through single sign on (SSO)
  
  
• Multi-layered enterprise class security architecture supporting BYOD and social communications
  
  
• Integration to communications-enable business processes.

"eZuce fully embraces the partnership we have with NextPlane as our collective efforts enable users to have more choice and flexibility in how they communicate and collaborate amongst contacts particularly within their social networks. This approach aligns directly with our overall product strategy as eZuce openUC is the solution of choice for Enterprises in need of open standards-based virtualized communications," said David Grazio, VP of Product Marketing, eZuce Inc.

NextPlane UC Exchange federation services enables users on different platforms - in different organizations - to work together as if they were served by the same UC platform. They can share presence, exchange instant messages, participate in multi-party chat sessions, share files, and make voice and video calls. UC platforms covered are: Microsoft Lync, OCS 2007 R2, OCS 2007 and LCS 2005, IBM Sametime, Cisco Jabber XCP, Cisco WebEx Messenger, Cisco Unified Presence Server (CUPS) 8.0, Google Apps, Jive OpenFire, Isode, eJabberd and now openUC.

UC Exchange helps enterprises breakdown the communication barriers throughout their "value system," including the value chains of upstream suppliers and downstream channels and customers, by enabling interested parties to participate in secure, federated, and collaborative business communities. It's about the community rather than about technical federation between two platforms. That technical piece is still required, but there's a layer over the top which has been added consisting of Directory Services and the Management Portal which enables organizations to build and participate in real-time collaborative communities. Today, there are no true competitors to the NextPlane solution.

The removal of barriers to effective collaboration allows enterprises to:

• Achieve higher ROI on UC - maximizing external federation value by enabling users to collaborate in real time with users in external customers, partners and supplier organizations, regardless of their UC platform.
  
  
• Become part of a global UC "Clearing House" community or market-specific community - with a single federation connection, single point of management and policies.
  
  
• Leverage increased functionality over traditional on-premise gateways - such as custom presence (i.e., a mapping of presence states into a common format across disparate systems), multi-party chat, voice and video whilst reducing on-premise product and management costs.
  
  
• Support flexible UC deployments - NextPlane's federation routing capabilities allow support for UC platform migration and co-existence while sharing the same domain name.